Stephan: I don't know about you but I am both saddened and angry at the corruption of our Congress and Supreme Court. The Congressional corruption is certainly bipartisan although the Republicans are notably worse on this score, Mitch McConnell being a horrific example. However, there are some Democrats who also stand out, and none is worse than Joe Manchin. It isn't just that he has been rented, rather that he is on long-term lease to the coal industry, and like McConnell has gone from very modest affluence when he came into the Congress to multi-millionaire status. Think about it, you get a decent salary as a member of Congress, $174,000, three times the average American salary, and the Majority and Minority leaders get a bit more, $193,400. Plus lots of perks and high status. How then do these congress members become multi-millionaires? Why long-term leasing by corporations and the ultra-rich, of course, because bribery of politicians is legal in the United States thanks to the Citizens United Supreme Court decision.
Being sworn into the U.S. Senate by Joe Biden in 2010. Credit: Drew Angerer/The New York Times
GRANT TOWN, WEST VIRGINIA — On a hilltop overlooking Paw Paw Creek, 15 miles south of the Pennsylvania border, looms a fortresslike structure with a single smokestack, the only viable business in a dying Appalachian town.
The Grant Town power plant is also the link between the coal industry and the personal finances of Joe Manchin III, the Democrat who rose through state politics to reach the United States Senate, where, through the vagaries of electoral politics, he is now the single most important figure shaping the nation’s energy and climate policy.
Mr. Manchin’s ties to the Grant Town plant date to 1987, when he had just been elected to the West Virginia Senate, a part-time job with base pay of $6,500. His family’s carpet business was struggling.
Opportunity arrived in the form of two developers who wanted to build a power plant in Grant Town, just outside Mr. Manchin’s district. Mr. Manchin, whose grandfather went to work in the mines at age 9 […]
